Highlighting the impactfulness of tobacco regulations and the success of the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC), an April 2017 report by peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet has found that tobacco usage has dropped in most countries in the past two decades.
The Lancet report used estimates of daily smoking prevalence differentiated by sex, age group, and year for 195 countries and territories between the years 1990 and 2015.
The report found that the global prevalence of men who smoke daily fell from 35% in 1990 to 25% in 2015; the prevalence among women dropped from 8.2% to 5.4%.
The degree of this drop, however, is heterogenous across countries and the pace of progress is varied across geographies, development status and sex. The most stark variations are regional in nature: the steepest falls were seen in rich countries like in Europe and the Americas. However, tobacco usage in developing countries in Asia and Africa has barely decreased, if not the same.
A greater percentage of countries and territories achieved significant annualised rates of decline in smoking prevalence from 1990 to 2005 than in between 2005 and 2015; however, only four countries had significant annualised increases in smoking prevalence between 2005 and 2015 (Congo and Azerbaijan for men and Kuwait and Timor-Leste for women).
The Lancet report singled out India, along with Pakistan and Panama, as three prime examples of countries that have implemented a large number of tobacco control policies over the past decade and have had marked declines in the prevalence of daily smoking since 2005, compared with decreases recorded between 1990 and 2005.
The entire Lancet report can be read here.
The tobacco epidemic
The scientific evidence that tobacco kills was made public in the 1960s and has since become one of the most publicised truths of modern times. But tobacco continues to kill and despite a steady decrease in tobacco usage in recent years, a lot of work remains to be done.
Smoking is the single largest preventable cause of death in the world. Every year, six million people are killed by tobacco. 600,000 of these deaths occur among non-smokers due to the effects of second-hand smoking.
Smoking was the second-leading risk factor for early death and disability worldwide in 2015. It has claimed more than 5 million lives every year since 1990 and its contribution to overall disease burden is growing, especially in lower income countries. The negative effects of smoking extend well beyond individual and population health as billions of dollars lost in productivity and health-care expenditure are related to smoking every year.
The world’s war against tobacco
Successfully combating the tobacco industry’s pursuit of new smokers has been further complicated by the substantive—and sometimes rapid—social, demographic, and economic shifts occurring worldwide. As the tobacco industry moves to target previously untapped markets, strong tobacco control policies and timely monitoring of smoking patterns are imperative.
Since the 1990s, there has been a steep increase in tobacco control initiatives alongside mainstream awareness about the evils of tobacco usage in all forms. Some of these successful strategies and interventions include
taxation of tobacco products, bans on smoking in public places, instituting smoke-free zones, restrictions on the marketing and promotion of cigarettes – including plain packaging laws, community-wide and nation-wide smoking cessation interventions, enforcement of both text and pictorial warning labels on tobacco products. Tobacco and the WHO: How FCTC made history
On an international, legislative scale, the most celebrated anti-tobacco policy has been the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which was adopted in Geneva, Switzerland in 2003
The FCTC is a supranational agreement that seeks “to protect present and future generations from the devastating health, social, environmental and economic consequences of tobacco consumption and exposure to tobacco smoke” by enacting a set of universal standards stating the dangers of tobacco and limiting its use in all forms worldwide.
To this end, the treaty’s provisions include rules that govern the production, sale, distribution, advertisement, and taxation of tobacco.
The FCTC is the world’s first public health treaty and has been a key driver of recent progress in reducing tobacco consumption and smoking prevalence in many regions of the world.
Ratified by 180 countries, the FCTC signified a watershed moment in global public health. Besides being one of the most quickly ratified treaties in United Nations history and one of the most consequential, the FCTC is also the first multilateral treaty regarding a chronic, non-communicable disease.
FCTC standards are minimum requirements and signatories are encouraged to be even more stringent in regulating tobacco tha…
